| Three
Kings Movie |
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News
from the L.A. Times |
| The stars of 'Three Kings' say it
will ruffle some political feathers, but it's all worth it to
them. |
| In January 1991, after
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered his troops to invade Kuwait,
a coalition of U.S.-led forces launched an intensive air, ground
and sea attack to expel Iraq and restore Kuwaiti independence. |
| With the largest overseas U.S. combat-troop
deployment since the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War severely
crippled Saddam's war machine, leaving tens of thousands of Iraqis
dead or wounded. Thousands were taken prisoner. Americans threw
victory parades, and the military took great pride in its accomplishments. |
| There was only one problem. The
Iraqi despot remained in power. Coalition troops under the command
of Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf were barred from rolling into
Baghdad. |
| In this setting, the Gulf War is
reexamined in a new Warner Bros. film called "Three Kings," written
and directed by David O. Russell, whose prior films include "Spanking
the Monkey" and "Flirting With Disaster." |
| Told with surrealistic dark humor
and edited in a frenetic, breakneck style, "Three Kings" stars
George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube in an unorthodox, rollicking,
buddy-caper movie--with political overtones. |
| Scheduled to open Oct. 1, the film
depicts American GIs as bored, disoriented and eager to get back
home. Clooney plays Special Forces Maj. Archie Gates, a career
soldier disillusioned because America, as it had with Vietnam,
does not want to finish what it set out to do. Wahlberg's character,
Sgt. Troy Barlow, is an Army Reserve soldier with a wife and new
baby back home who believes in the mission. Cube plays Staff Sgt.
Chief Elgin, a God-fearing baggage handler from Detroit whose
stoic commitment to his responsibilities earns him respect. |
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| When they discover
a map hidden on a surrendering Iraqi soldier, the
GIs take off in search of a huge cache of gold Hussein
is reputed to have stolen from Kuwait. |
| As the soldiers raid
bunker after bunker, they come face-to-face with
Iraqis--who had been encouraged by the West to rise
up against Hussein--being rounded up, tortured and
killed by Hussein's Republican Guard. The "Three
Kings" must decide whether they should drop what
they are doing and help the Iraqi civilians escape. |
| In a recent interview
at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, Clooney,
Wahlberg and Cube sat down to discuss the film,
the war and the risks of making a political movie
in the nervous corporate climate of today's Hollywood. |
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| Question: You play three
GIs who go AWOL right after the Gulf War. You find a cache of
gold that Saddam Hussein has stolen from Kuwait and hidden in
the desert. Is this based on a real story? |
| Clooney: Were there spoils
of war? Saddam certainly took a lot of things that he took from
Kuwait. We didn't go over there and check out the bunkers, but
everybody that went said there were tons of that stuff. |
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Wahlberg: It's
obvious that it's there. Kuwait is one of the richest countries
in the world. Everybody knew what Saddam had done.
Q: As a politically informed action-adventure, this movie
treads where others usually choose not to go. |
| Clooney: There is a danger
. . . as we go through this [publicity] process, that Cube and
Mark and Spike and I, and David, too, are going to suddenly become
experts on the Gulf War. . . . We'll be asked our opinions. Remember
this, because in the political climate of [George W. Bush], and
since we sort of go after the George Bush policy in this a little
bit, that's going to become a hotbed. So, suddenly we are going
to become these experts on something that we don't know enough
about to be the experts on. We know some. |
| Wahlberg: I thought I knew
a lot about what was going on. I paid attention to what was being
said and shown in the media as much as anybody else, but the second
I got on the set I was privileged to so much more information. |
| Clooney: I knew some of what
happened in the script was real. We knew that we told the Shiites
[we'd back them up], and we knew that we didn't back them and
they all got massacred. Schwarzkopf and those guys gave away the
fly zone and let those guys have helicopters inside the borders
and assassinate all these people that were throwing rocks at the
end of the war. |
| Cube: I like how the movie
shifts gears. It's like going from comedy, then it goes into the
heist, and then there's this action and then [an Iraqi mother]
gets shot [by Hussein's Republican Guards] and it turns into a
whole different thing. |
| Clooney: Well, the great
thing is it's not an anti-American movie, either. It doesn't piss
all over American policy in general. It just says we should know
more. . . . All of the [film's] military advisors were there,
and they all said, 'This is how it happened. We had to stand by
and let the Republican Guard . . . kick the [expletive] out of
a people that we told to rise up and overthrow the government. |
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| Q: So the movie does take
a political position? |
| Clooney: It's a political
movie like "MASH" was a political movie. |
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| Q: This kind of peels back
the layers and gives people some idea what the Gulf War was really
like. |
| Cube: I think this movie
is very, very American because if you had a chance to score, as
an American, you're going to go for it. You know what I'm saying?
If you've got a chance to get into a fight--Americans are always
down for that. You don't see too many Americans running from a
good fight. And then helping people at the end. When it's all
said and done, we stopped thinking about ourselves and thought
about the people that we were helping. |
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| Q: There is a point in the
movie, George, where you make that decision to help the Iraqi
civilians. A mother is shot in the head at point-blank range while
her daughter and husband are looking on. |
| Clooney: As an audience,
if I step back and watch it, it's pretty gruesome violence. It's
also the most responsibly violent movie I've seen in a long, long
time. David's thing was every bullet counts. You don't just see
the effect of a gun going off, you see what it does to your body.
Literally, your insides. You see what it does to the family. You
see everything. |
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| Q: And the characters you
play? |
| Clooney: I'm a choreographer.
[laughter] |
| Q: Who exactly is Archie
Gates? |
| Clooney: Archie Gates is
sort of based a lot on this guy, [Sgt. Maj.] Jim Parker, who was
a technical advisor who gave David a lot of the stuff he used
in the script. He also died of cancer while we were shooting.
Great guy. And, interestingly, he'd fought in a lot of different
wars. Gates has been through a war [in Vietnam] where we didn't
complete it and came home and felt abandoned by his country. And
now, he has sort of been promised, "This time we're going in and
the country is going to back you and we're going to get this one
and do it the right way," and he believed it. What happens is,
the minute we crossed those borders, we stopped. And we said,
"OK, we win." Just because we said, "We win," not because we finished
the job we set out to do. And this character feels abandoned again.
So, now, he says, "Screw it. I'm taking care of me." And he goes
and finds the gold. That's sort of his character. |
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| Q: Your character, Cube? |
| Cube: Chief is basically
from Detroit. You know, seen a lot of violence. Very religious
man. Basically in the Army Reserves and making a little money
on the side and isn't expecting to be caught up in the war. And
he gets caught up in the war. He relies on the training, but he
is going to rely on the same thing that got him through the streets
of Detroit, his Lord and savior Jesus Christ. That's where he's
coming from. He's going to take the training and use it perfectly.
You know, he's not going to do his own thing. I think Chief is
somebody you want on your right hand. |
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| Q: But what happens? He changes
too. He agrees to go along with it. |
| Cube: He has seen so much
death on the streets of his home, so he's going to take life the
same way. As it comes. He's not going to over-think tomorrow or
over-think yesterday. He's going to take it as it comes. And,
if this is an opportunity for him, he's going to take it. |
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| Q: And Mark? |
| Wahlberg: Barlow is just
like Chief. Instead of being from the 'hood, he's from the trailer
park. I think Troy Barlow is a guy who is trying to |
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